On October 21, 2023, CALE/ACEJ held its annual meeting of members at the Faculty of Law, University of Victoria. In his report, President Stephen Pitel outlined CALE/ACEJ’s activities over the past year, including: the transition of the Chief Information Officer role from Amy Salyzyn to Basil Alexander; transitioning the listserv from UOttawa to Google Groups; implementing a Travel Grant Program to support graduate students and post-doctoral fellows attending the conference; partnering with the CBA and FLSC for the 2023 Ethics Forum; submissions to the FLSC’s National Requirement Review Committee re: ethics and professionalism and to the FLSC’s Model Code Committee re: former judges returning to practice; and other director submissions and activities that build awareness of CALE/ACEJ.
Treasurer, Corporate Secretary, and Chief Information Officer Basil Alexander reported on CALE/ACEJ’s current and prospective financial positions, which are positive. CRA also approved CALE/ACEJ’s year-end change to April 30 as of 2022-23 (reflected in the financial statements), and CALE/ACEJ is current with its corporate and tax filings.
Elected as directors of CALE/ACEJ for 2023-24 are Basil Alexander, Gideon Christian, Richard Devlin, Adam Dodek, Jula Hughes, Gillian MacNeil, Andrew Flavelle Martin, Pooja Parmar, Stephen Pitel, Amy Salyzyn and Deanne Sowter. It was also noted that efforts should continue to recruit at least one director from Quebec.
The directors then met and appointed the following officers for 2023-24: Chair of the Board Amy Salyzyn, President Stephen Pitel, Vice-President Pooja Parmar, Corporate Secretary and Treasurer Basil Alexander, Chief Information Officer Basil Alexander, and Conference Coordinator Richard Devlin.
The directors also discussed potential ideas for using the casebook royalties, the current working of the listserv and its Community Guidelines, ethics and professionalism as part of the NCA process, and potential future meetings. Chief Information Officer Basil Alexander will send out an update/reminder to the listserv about individual/group replies as well as some of the Community Guidelines’ key points. He will also make initial suggestions to the Board about likely minor updates to the Community Guidelines.
At the end of the members meeting, Dalhousie University was announced as the 2024 CALE/ACEJ conference host. There are also hopeful preliminary possibilities for other future hosts.
CALE/ACEJ extended its thanks to Pooja Parmar, Robert Lapper, Alan Treleaven, Laura Hamilton, Tayana Simpson, and others at the University of Victoria for their successful organization of this year’s conference.
